Trump says North Korea no longer a nuclear threat; North highlights concessions

>> Reuters
Published: 2018-06-13 18:42:15 BdST

North Korea no longer poses a nuclear threat, nor is it the "biggest and most dangerous problem" for the United States, President Donald Trump said on Wednesday on his return from a summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The
summit was the first between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader
and followed a flurry of North Korean nuclear and missile tests and angry
exchanges between Trump and Kim last year that fuelled fears of war.

"Everybody
can now feel much safer than the day I took office," Trump said on
Twitter.

"There
is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an
interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for
the future!"

On
Tuesday, Trump told a news conference after the summit that he would like to
lift sanctions against the North but that this would not happen immediately.

North
Korean state media lauded the summit as a resounding success, saying Trump
expressed his intention to halt US-South Korea military exercises, offer
security guarantees to the North and lift sanctions against it as relations
improve.

Kim and
Trump invited each other to their respective countries and both leaders
"gladly accepted," the North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)
said.

"Kim
Jong Un and Trump had the shared recognition to the effect that it is important
to abide by the principle of step-by-step and simultaneous action in achieving
peace, stability and denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula," KCNA said.

Trump
said the United States would stop military exercises with South Korea while
North Korea negotiated on denuclearisation.

"We
save a fortune by not doing war games, as long as we are negotiating in good
faith - which both sides are!" he said on Twitter.

US
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said Trump's reasoning for halting the
exercises was "ridiculous".

"It's
not a burden onto the American taxpayer to have a forward deployed force in
South Korea," Graham told CNN.

"It
brings stability. It's a warning to China that you can't just take over the
whole region. So I reject that analysis that it costs too much, but I do accept
the proposition, let's stand down (on military exercises) and see if we can
find a better way here."

Speaking
in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said he hoped all
parties could "grasp the moment of positive changes" on the peninsula
to take constructive steps towards a political resolution and promoting
denuclearisation.

"At
this time, everyone had seen that North Korea has halted missile and nuclear
tests, and the United States and South Korea have to an extent restricted their
military actions. This has de facto realised China's dual suspension
proposal," he told a daily news briefing.

"When
it comes to Trump's statement yesterday that he would halt South Korea and the
United States' military drills, I can only say that China's proposal is indeed
practical and reasonable, is in line with all sides' interests and can resolve
all sides' concerns."

China,
North Korea's main ally, last year proposed what it calls a "dual
suspension", whereby North Korea suspend nuclear and missile tests, and
South Korea and the United States suspend military drills.

SURPRISE

There
was some confusion over precisely what military cooperation with South Korea
Trump had promised to halt.

The US-South
Korean exercise calendar hits a high point every year with the Foal Eagle and
Max Thunder drills, which both wrapped up last month. Another major exercise is
due in August.

The
United States maintains about 28,500 soldiers in South Korea, which remains in
a technical state of war with the North after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a
truce not a peace treaty.

Trump's
announcement on the exercises was a surprise even to South Korea's President
Moon Jae-in, who has worked in recent months to help bring about the Trump-Kim
summit.

Asked
about Trump's comments, South Korean presidential spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom told
reporters there was a need to seek measures that would help improve engagement
with North Korea but it was also necessary to confirm exactly what Trump had
meant.

Moon
will be chairing a national security meeting on Thursday to discuss the summit.

Trump's
administration had previously ruled out any concessions or lifting of sanctions
without North Korea's commitment to complete, verifiable and irreversible steps
to scrap a nuclear arsenal that is advanced enough to threaten the United
States.

But a
joint statement issued after the summit said only that North Korea
"commits to work towards the complete denuclearisation of the Korean
peninsula".

US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is to lead the US side in talks with North
Korea to implement outcomes of the summit, arrived in South Korea on Wednesday,
to be greeted by General Vincent Brooks, the top US commander in South Korea,
and US Charge d'Affaires Marc Knapper.

Pompeo
had a meeting with Brooks before heading to Seoul, according to a pool report.
He is set to meet Moon on Thursday and hold a three-way meeting with Foreign
Minister Kang Kyung-wha and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono.

On
Tuesday, just after Trump's surprise announcement, a spokesman for US Forces
Korea said they had not received any instruction to cease joint military
drills.

Although
the Pentagon said Defence Secretary Jim Mattis was consulted, current and
former US defence officials expressed concern at the possibility the United
States would halt the exercises without an explicit concession from North Korea
lowering the threat.

CRITICS IN THE UNITED STATES

Critics
in the United States said Trump had given away too much at a meeting that gave
Kim long-sought international standing.

The
North Korean leader had been isolated, his country accused of widespread human
rights abuses and under UN sanctions for its nuclear and ballistic missile
programmes.

"For
North Korea, they got exactly what they wanted," said Moon Seong-mook, a
former South Korean military official current head of the Unification Strategy
Centre in Seoul.

"They
had a summit as a nuclear state with Kim on equal turf with Trump, got the
United States to halt joint military exercises with South Korea. It's a win for
Kim Jong Un."

Japan's
Minister of Defence Itsunori Onodera said that, while North Korea had pledged
denuclearisation, no concrete steps had been taken and Japan would not let down
its guard.

"We
see US-South Korean joint exercises and the US military presence in South Korea
as vital to security in East Asia," Onodera told reporters. "It is up
to the US and South Korea to decide about their joint exercises. We have no
intention of changing our joint drills with the US"

Japan
would only start shouldering the costs of North Korea's denuclearisation after
the International Atomic Energy Agency restarts inspections, Japanese Chief
Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters.

The
Singapore summit did not get top billing in the main state news outlets in
China.

The
English-language China Daily said in an editorial that while it remained to be
seen if the summit would be a defining moment, the fact it went smoothly was
positive.

"It
has ignited hopes that they will be finally able to put an end to their
hostility and that the long-standing peninsula issues can finally be resolved.
These hopes should not be extinguished," it said.